The progression of things
by sarakirai
Summary: Takasugi Shinsuke gets to know one Tokugawa Soyo. Or, one of the ways life could go when two warped young minds meet. [Gintama 3Z verse that transitions into a modern AU. Rated M largely for language and descriptions of violence, brief lemons near the end. Trigger warnings for arson and suicide.]


**A/N: **I AM SO DONE WITH THIS SITE PLEASE VISIT MY AO3 INSTEAD UGH /raves/

moving on; some things to note before you start reading.

1) this is 3Z verse, so the main cast are all 18

2) I know this pair is the most implausible thing ever, but why not? It just happened when I went with the flow.

3) If you're still going to imagine them as a pair in canon and squirm, I have three words for you: GinGura shippers exist

4) tbh idk if I ship these two either

Disclaimer: I do not own Gintama

**xxx**

It's just another day in this stupid school with this stupid class for Takasugi Shinsuke.

When the final bell rings he stretches out languidly in his seat and lets his head loll back while everyone else streams out of the classroom. He doesn't move, though, except to angle his head and look out the window – at the students who fan out across the parade square, the gates of the school and the street beyond.

Today some friends of that idiot China girl (Okita's favourite, Takasugi reminds himself) are waiting for her there. He recognises Nobume, because she's Isaburou's junior from that swanky elite school and they've met before, she's a _total_ weirdo. She's lounging against the brick wall in that dazzling white gakuran, wolfing down a box of doughnuts as usual, eyesore that she is. Takasugi's more interested in the other one. His sharp eye picks out the soft pinks and creams of a sailor uniform, the kind that screams _private all-girls high school,_ which is a nice contrast to long black hair. Somehow, she manages to look regal even as she slouches next to Nobume, tilting that pale, slender neck to scan her surroundings in a grand and careless way – much like him, he thinks.

His slow chuckle is abruptly cut off, though, when the girl looks up and locks eyes with him so _casually_ that it's clearly deliberate (and here he feels both distinguished and slighted at the notice he's gotten). Damn. He can't make out the colour of her eyes from this distance, but the sentiment in them is strangely familiar, a pulsating sense of emptiness and lonely anguish. Only when she meets his eye, he notices, does it seem that way; otherwise they revert back to being calm and steady with a latent spark. It's almost like she blames him for something, but what? He's certain he hasn't seen her before, or he would remember. They share a last dismissive glance before straightening their posture and turning away, the very epitome of disinterested (and synchronised) hauteur.

The next time Takasugi lets Sabu-chan, as he calls himself, drag him out for some friendly bonding time, he does a little prodding. But he doesn't find out anything, because Sabu-chan is an idiot who really can't pick up on suggestive subtexts, and all he does is blabber on and on about Nobume and why she should share her doughnuts with him or how cute she looks when she's eating them. When he feels like he's reached his limit listening to all that drivel, Takasugi slaps down enough money to cover his share and leaves, brisk steps taking him away without a single glance back.

On the way home he plugs in his earpiece and plays Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor on repeat, closing his eyes to let the old violent fantasies wash over him.

**xxx**

His luck is better in school. He's sprawled against half of Okita's desk with Kamui's braid tickling his ear, watching the Sadist-China couple argue pointlessly about shit instead of cleaning the classroom like they're supposed to, when they jump to a topic that makes his ears perk up.

"China," Okita drawls, "shouldn't you be making some real effort to clean your own desk? Wouldn't want your friends to be kept waiting too long, right?"

Takasugi sits up. _She's here? Right now? But he can't ascertain it himself, too obvious. He's not even sure why he's curious, or drawn to this hime-sama._ He slumps back down and Kamui chuckles at him, turning to the glasses kid who's rolling his eyes and muttering to himself as he wipes the window panes down.

"Well?" Kamui very nicely voices his thoughts for him. "Are they already there?"

"Of course they're there," Shinpachi deadpans. "Just look at them, standing there like they're normal innocent girls."

Okita smirks and chimes in. "A China brat, a doughnut freak and a sadistic princess. How _delightful_." He ducks to avoid Kagura's punch; she grabs his ear and tries to twist it off instead.

Shinpachi nods. "They're the sadistic sisterhood three, I'm telling you."

Kamui smiles knowingly through the whole exchange, playing with his braid.

"Hey, wait a minute," Takasugi interjects, craning his neck. "Why do all of you sound so familiar with them, huh?"

Okita and Kamui leer sympathetically at him, and then wordlessly point at Kagura, who strikes a diva pose. _Oh. China. He should have known._

He should have known better than to betray his unusual interest in a girl, too. The bunch of them gathers round him expectantly, a school of sharks practically frenzied for gossip, and he glares, but he's cornered and he knows it. Kagura smirks indulgently at his sulking face, conferring in whispers with her brother and that not-quite-boyfriend of hers, in a volume just loud enough for him to hear. Sick bastards, they're mocking him.

"_Hear that, China? Bakasugi wants to be introduced to one of your girlfriends, isn't that nice."_

_A disdainful snort is issued. _

"_Unladylike," Kamui chides, yanking on his sister's bangs. "Anyway, he's friends with Sabu-chan, so it can't be Nobume, yes? But how strange. Since when was Soyo-chan his type?"_

"_You tell me," she says, rolling her eyes. "You two are his friends, not me."_

"…_And call her Soyo-hime, asshole."_

They forget the bickering, because there are more important things to do, like give him an appraising stare (and their collective silence gives him goose bumps too, though he doesn't show it).

He waits.

"Tokugawa Soyo," the China girl says out of the blue – and it takes Takasugi a moment to realise it was directed at him. "That's her name. You'll go find out the rest yourself, yes?"

Takasugi plays with the deep purple ends of his hair and says, "Yes."

**xxx**

They all file out after that because Shinpachi's done with their share of the cleaning and Ginpachi-sensei is an irresponsible fucker so no one's coming to check on them, anyhow. The others want to go eat, but he declines (as per normal, really). Besides, he has other things to think about, so he climbs over the fence at the back of the school and pretends he can't hear the gang sniggering at his retreating back. Just for the record, his face isn't red, either.

In the weeks that follow, he finds out that she really does fit the princess mould, right down to the tragically deceased parents and trust fund inheritance and huge mansion and protective older brother. It's a pity, really, that she happens to be related to one Tokugawa Sadasada, that shitbag politician. There's nothing recent on the brother, though, and that needles Takasugi, so he sits down and diligently combs through the internet search results and news articles on the Tokugawa family. At last, he hits pay dirt – a full-page splash from five years back that answers his all his questions about the look in her eyes: a horrific car accident that left her in hospital for months and her brother in a vegetative state, likely permanent. _So that's what she lost, huh?_ He shuts the laptop and smiles thinly at the framed photograph on his desk, faded with age and bearing the scars of previous fits of anger – thin cracks along the glass, tarnished and misshapen edges.

_Shouyo-san_. He streaks loving fingers over their faces, pressed close and smiling.

Figures it'd sound like her name.

The day after he discovers that, he sees her. It happens purely by chance, of course. Kamui needed to make a trip to the mall to replace all the stationery he's broken in the past few days, and there had been this book of poetry Takasugi was eyeing, so he's quite willing to tag along. As expected, the Yato gets hungry and drifts off towards the food and beverage area the minute they're done purchasing what they need; Takasugi follows at a leisurely pace while his companion tries to figure out how much food he can buy without bankrupting himself again. As he trails the flash of vermillion braid through the crowd, he finds himself pressed up next to the glass front of a restaurant by the flow of people parting for some pram or whatnot – and _her_, on the other side of the glass. He walks in without thinking, folding his frame into the empty seat opposite her. Her eyes are brown, he notes.

"Tokugawa Soyo-san." He says, ignoring the rest of the table as they gape at him and his purple highlights. He surmises that this is a group date he's interrupted, but hey, Soyo wasn't looking too interested – and no one was talking to her anyway.

She doesn't miss a beat with her rejoinder, though she hisses it in a low tone, meant only for his ears, with a benign expression that throws him (and everyone else, he's sure) off completely.

"Fucking _arsonist_."

His eyes widen marginally, then he throws his head back and _laughs _till his chest is burning and he stops trying to wipe the tears away.

"Y-you should call me s-something else, Soyo-san," he manages to wheeze out while in between breaths, still gasping and heaving with mirth.

"It's Takasugi," he crows, delightedly, "Takasugi Shinsuke!"

She narrows those almond orbs at his crinkled emerald one.

"And is that all?"

"Yes," he chuckles, as he clears his throat and gathers his bag to leave, "that is all for now."

She waves him off aloofly as he heads over to join Kamui, and will only say when questioned that the hot weirdo was a friend of a friend, nothing more, nothing less.

**xxx**

The next time they see each other is when he's returning home after shamisen lessons in town, and she's sitting at his regular dinner place like it's her normal hangout too. Takasugi smirks at the sight – he knows she's been waiting for him, as well as _why_ she's been waiting for him, and that fills him with a rather twisted sense of satisfaction. So he walks up to the counter and takes a seat next to her, carefully propping the instrument case up.

"Soyo-chan," he greets.

She's equally cordial, replying to his implied intimacy with a "Shinsuke-kun" of her own. He's vaguely impressed.

They stare at the menu together. When they've ordered and are waiting for the food, he turns to her expectantly.

"So you saw me, Soyo-chan," he begins. "But how is it that I didn't see you, then?"

Takasugi remembers that day well – too well.

After being chucked out by his family and bumped around a little, Shouyo had taken him in, officially become his foster father. And he was glad, so glad, for all the warmth and love he was receiving and growing up on. When he started his first year in middle school, Shouyo began helping out in politics, managing the campaign of some mayoral candidate who, as luck would have it, didn't quite agree with one Tokugawa Sadasada's way of governing the city as incumbent. And of course that didn't sit too well with the old fart, which made him see everyone connected to his rival candidate as fair game – especially Shouyo. _Dying in some staged accident_, Takasugi broods, _how cliché an ending for such a uniquely wonderful human._

And he'd wanted the world to remember, wanted to mark this occasion with something more tangible and painfully real than a small column in the paper and a box of what they claimed were his beloved Shouyo's ashes, so he headed downtown as the sun was setting and razed Sadasada's official residence to the ground, drinking everything in with his one good eye. Maniacal green tinged with all the different hues of red and orange and grey and yellow and black. He'd taken advantage of all the smoke around then, and cried his heart out, as a thirteen-year-old should be able to when he loses the only person he ever loved in this life, a father-figure who cannot be replaced.

When he was done reducing himself to an empty, emotionless shell, he left the way he came: the servant's entrance, where he mingled with all the other screaming people (_idiots_) who had no idea that he'd cut the phone lines or disabled the security system with a nimble bit of hacking. Then he went home.

Soyo, on the other hand, recalls that she'd been sitting in her rooms and minding her own business when the first of the smoke alarms went off, and she went looking for her brother immediately. It wasn't easy to navigate in the midst of thickening smoke and gathering dusk, the oppressive heat radiating from the blaze serving to weaken her further. She'd had to lean over the parapet several times, trying to clear her lungs (and her head) with air from the gardens, where the fire hadn't reached yet – and what should she see but a boy her age? Though she didn't have time to think about him just then, because Maizou found her and hastily bundled her off to the car with Shigeshige, to leave for somewhere safer.

How ironic, then, that everything unfolded the way it did.

"It was clever of you, Shinsuke-kun," she comments, "to choose evening. There were people panicking and running all over the road, and when the driver was forced to swerve to avoid them we ended up smashing into a wall."

Her voice is monotonous, and he can't help but lean in.

"Go on, Soyo-chan," he whispers onto her cheek. _Tell me how angry you were. He needs to hear it._

"When I regained consciousness in the hospital," she hears herself say, "you were the first thing that came to mind. It was so strange, you know, to stare at the white expanse of a hospital ward ceiling and see other colours. Well, when I opened my eyes I saw your dark purple hair and the fucked up look in your eye and the tear tracks on your face and I knew – knew that it was you. The fire, I mean. I never expected to catch sight of you again, but that day at your school," she mutters, "I did, huh."

And then after the waking up and thinking of this stranger she finally remembered to ask about her brother. She'd been so glad that he was alive at first, and those around her thankful for the stability of her condition, that nothing had happened to raise any alarm for the first few weeks of her recovery. Until it seemed like Shigeshige wasn't going to wake up, and she absolutely lost it, tearing the hospital gown and ripping the tubes from her arms and screaming like a banshee until they sent people in to sedate her.

Her uncle came in once, after that, to tell her that they would keep her brother on life support. She promised to act normal. It was a reasonable trade.

Their bowls of ramen are placed in front of them at this point, and Takasugi pulls back, propping both elbows on the counter. Soyo is sitting on his right, next to his good eye, and he watches her ladle a portion of noodles and broth onto her spoon, plucking a scrap of beef from the bowl and placing it on top, with precise motions of her chopsticks.

He gracefully plucks a dumpling from his bowl and extends it toward her.

"Shall we trade?" he offers in that deep, velvety voice of his, and she turns.

"Haven't we already?" she says, withheld emotion twisting her lips into a grimace.

Takasugi sighs and puts the dumpling in Soyo's bowl anyway, before shifting his own so he can support himself comfortably with his left elbow and eat while facing her. She stares at the parting of his bangs, at the way they fall over his good eye and the sharpness of his cheekbone. She's dreamed of killing him before, she knows, back when he was still a nameless face. She entertained constant thoughts of setting his sleeve alight and watching the flame flicker and spread, ravenously devouring the flesh, leaving only the smooth white bone. She imagines his good eye, open till the end, ringed by flame and forced to close. Empty sockets.

"I suppose so," he says, staring past her and scratching his neck absent-mindedly. "A life for a life, yes? But I was really talking about the food, no matter how allegorical you think I was being, Soyo-chan."

"There."

Soyo snares some beef with her chopsticks and transfers it to his bowl (but there's more to this, he can tell).

"Can we make another trade, Shinsuke-kun?"

He raises the morsel to his lips.

"It's a promise," he smiles, and then inserts the chopstick ends in to his mouth and chews thoughtfully, supple lips sliding over smooth ivory. She smiles wanly at the display.

He waits with her by the curb until her chauffer arrives, and she tells him that since he plays the shamisen and she plays the koto, they could totally perform together one day. He says he'll keep that in mind, and that maybe they could do the traditional tea ceremony, too. That makes her laugh for the first time, and it's a melody he'll replay over and over again in his sleep, the background music to grand fantasies of destruction and ruin and hazy fires that make him cry.

Come morning, Takasugi wakes with Soyo's name on his lips.

**xxx**

They don't see each other alone again until graduation day, when he turns to slink off from the unwelcome bustle and finds her standing right in his line of vision – he almost mistakes her for a mirage. It's her shadow that convinces him she's real, of all things.

"Tea ceremony," she says, by way of explanation, and he nods, turning to lead her to the school's tearoom. Unfortunately, the tatami room is already occupied by others, who from the sound of it are likely not carrying out tea ceremony in there. Takasugi and Soyo stand outside the sliding paper doors, side by side, listening quietly to the muffled scrapes and thumps and whimpers that issue from within. It's all of thirty seconds before they wordlessly agree to go find an empty room of their own.

It's a hurried, frenzied affair, and they rush through the motions as if they're going to die soon and they really want to get themselves off before that. Their pants of breath are ragged, gasps unwillingly elicited, filling the air around them as they clumsily fondle with each other's bodies. The kisses they share are hard and bruising, and they bite and claw and suckle with so much vengeance that it wouldn't seem like they were making love at all. They nearly come when he sheaths himself inside her in one measured thrust, desperately riding it out with sharp, short bucks of their hips and muttered curses. After they finish, they lie back on the concrete floor fully naked, and stare at the ceiling, sprawled out uncaring of their state. The fan whirs overhead, drying the sweat on their bodies.

"You're not bad, Shinsuke," Soyo says, dipping her hand between her legs experimentally. It's something very novel to feel the wetness there, and to know that it's from a mixture of both her fluid and his seed, when they came together.

It reminds her that they aren't just a pair of desperate, horny teenagers, because they mean so much more to each other. They were brought together in this world by death, yet they have the power to create life together – but that doesn't feel right, somehow. It makes their existence sound way more meaningful than she feels it is. She breaks the comfortable silence by mentioning this to her lover – that is what they are now.

He nods, humming softly, and beckons her over to his side. He laughs a little when she crawls over lazily and places her ear on his chest to listen to his heartbeat, hair splayed out over his abdominal muscles; she revels in the rise and fall of his chest as he runs shapely hands through her jet black tresses. They're dark and lustrous and Shinsuke can almost make out his reflection in the sheen they give off; it's a dark, broken image that won't let itself be seen clearly - how appropriate, he thinks, raising the tips and playing with them. But when he's moving inside her, drugged by pleasurable sensations, he can focus and see himself through all the haze: and he knows where he's going and where he's taking her, because there is only one end point in sexual intercourse.

"Soyo," he prompts suddenly, and she looks up as he says, "Again."

She smiles carefully. "Slower."

"Deal," he grins, and seals it with a kiss.

**xxx**

In college, they continue as they are, seeing each other only when they feel like it – which means whenever the sick fantasies full of blood and gore resurface, or thoughts of the other's voice, or their laugh, has driven either of them to distraction. And that turns out to be pretty often. They'll go to Takasugi's apartment, or some random park, or park their car on a quiet street. It isn't always sex, because sometimes all they need is to lean against each other and let their shoulders touch, or lace pinkies, to feel a little of the ravaging bleakness inside them drain away. They like staring each other in the eyes. They also write poems about their dreams, now, for both the normal mundane sort and the wake-up-screaming-and-covered-in-blood sort. The walls above their beds are blanketed with elegant writing, inky black etchings on smooth rice paper. The representation of their hearts.

Sometimes after they make love Takasugi takes out his shamisen and plays for her. One time she recognises the tune and sings; Yoshiwara's Lament. It hits a little too close to home, though, all those lines about crushed dreams and transient desire and simulated affection, and it shows in their bitter expressions. Shinsuke leans over Soyo and crushes his lips to hers as she cups him through the fabric of his pants – they need the sweet high of an orgasm to wash those thoughts of the past away. His Shouyo-san is never coming back, and her brother is still a vegetable. They pay him a visit one day. Takasugi stares at what is left of the man lying in the hospital bed, dips his head in what passes for a bow, and leaves. Soyo bows too, but deeper, and follows after him.

**xxx**

When Soyo is about to turn twenty-two, Sadasada announces that it's about time she got married, and pushes a fiancé across the table at her.

She calls Takasugi later, in the relative privacy of her personal bathroom.

"Shinsuke," she begins without preamble when he picks up, "can I collect on that trade you promised me, the year we were eighteen?"

"Of course," he murmurs into the phone. "When do you want to die, Soyo-chan?"

She's already thought it through so she says, firmly, "The next festival."

And can't help adding, before she hangs up, that he should wear a yukata.

**xxx**

The next festival is Tanabata, as they both very well know, and they meet on the appointed day looking simply resplendent in their traditional dress, Orihime and Hikoboshi brought to life - though their story is nothing so awe-inspiring or romantic as that of the pair above them who tryst on a heavenly bridge. Soyo wears red, the colour of a proper princess, with the trailing blues, greens and golds of peacocks and flowers painstakingly embroidered on - and Takasugi has the sneaking suspicion that this is the furisode that her family specially had made for her wedding. He himself is in a rich purple yukata dappled with gold butterflies and indigo petals; a perfect complement for his lady. People gawk as they pass on the streets, but they don't know what they're looking at, do they now?

Clothes for a festival turned into clothes for a funeral. The contrast is sobering, but they're no strangers to morbidity, so they let themselves loose and do things they wouldn't otherwise have risked. Like rough sex in a toilet stall where Takasugi takes her from behind, reaching through the cumbersome folds of yukata to plunge his aching shaft deep inside her. She arches her back and reaches out to cup his balls as they slap against the curve of her ass, and he bites down on the exposed portion of her neck as they climax in turns, panting heavily from the exertion. After cleaning up, he walks with her through the moonlit streets and lets her lean on his arm, resting his chin atop her hair for a moment.

They go to an empty rooftop to wait for the fireworks, and Soyo takes the opportunity to pose a question.

"Hey, Shinsuke," she says lowly, "What are you trading with me? I'm having you help me break off an arranged marriage, and my life, but what about you?"

Strong fingers grip her chin (the same ones that fingered her so crudely earlier that night) to angle her face upwards and his gaze bores into her, earnest and deadly.

"You, Soyo," he utters, "will break my heart again," and here his velvety voice slips even lower, "and that is quite enough."

It's too much, really. For Takasugi to even imply that she has become as important to him as Shouyo, her almost-namesake. Yet the fact that she is trusting him to end her life dictates that she should trust his words, too, fallacious thinking be damned. Soyo wraps his arms around her from behind and stands caged in his embrace, relaxing against the warm expanse of his chest; willing him to soften, too. When the first of the fireworks shoots up into the sky, she raises her head in rapture, milky white throat arching in a beautiful curve. That's when Shinsuke slashes the knife across with perfect precision, slitting her throat in one elegant manoeuvre. He gathers her carefully into his arms as he swings over the parapet that separates him from her now, in the other world.

As Takasugi slots the knife into his chest and steps off the ledge, he presses a last kiss to her cold, unresponsive lips - hopefully, he thinks, this will get them to someplace else where he and Soyo, poor damaged creatures that they are, can have a shot at being whole and happy instead.

His last thoughts are of their blood mixing on the blade, and the fervent wish that their souls will be kindred too.

**xxx**


End file.
